1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information recording method that only once installs information editing/recording application software from an optical disk into an information processor such as a personal computer, selects desired ones from among information pieces such as image and music pieces stored in the personal computer, edits the selected information pieces in desired order, writes the edited information pieces in a blank area and/or a rewritable area of the optical disk according to a predetermined optical-disk-standard format, makes the application software in the optical disk unreadable, and enables the optical disk with the written information to be played with an existing optical disk player. The present invention also relates to an optical disk to which the information recording method is applied.
2. Description of Related Art
Recently, digital cameras are widely used. The user may store images photographed with the digital camera in a hard disk of a personal computer. From among the stored images, the user may select desired ones and edit them in desired order for a slide show with the use of slide-show-editing application software stored in, for example, a CD-ROM (compact disc read only memory) or a DVD-ROM (digital versatile disk read only memory). Appropriate for such a purpose is a slide-show apparatus disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2001-103415.
The slide-show apparatus (not shown) of this disclosure allows a user to edit image files stored in a CD-ROM with a slide-show executing program (slide-show-editing application software) stored in the CD-ROM. This slide-show executing program is also usable to select images taken by a digital camera and stored in a personal computer and edit the selected images in desired order for a slide show.
If the slide-show images selected and edited in the personal computer are written in a recordable-playable optical disk and if the optical disk is playable with a marketed optical disk (DVD or CD) player, one can see the slide-show images at home on a television monitor connected to the optical disk player. Naturally, the images may be viewed on a personal computer. The optical disk containing the slide-show images may be sent to a remote location.
There are several kinds of recordable-playable optical disks in the market. Among them, once-recordable optical disks include CD-R (CD recordable) disks and DVD-R (DVD recordable) disks and rewritable optical disks include CD-RW (CD rewritable) disks, DVD-RW (DVD rewritable) disks, and DVD-RAM (DVD random access memory) disks.
Generally, an optical disk such as a CD-ROM or a DVD-ROM provided with a slide-show executing program or information editing/recording application software is expensive without regard to the frequency of use of the program by a user because of the high development cost of the program. Due to this, the program, which may be used only a few times a year, is poorly sold.
To sell an optical disk containing information editing/recording application software at a low price, the application software may have a limited number of times of use so that a user may repeatedly purchase the same. If such a marketing concept is established, a developer of the application software can sell many pieces of the software to recover the development cost, and users can purchase the same at a low price although the use of the software is limited to a certain number of times. Then, both the developer and user have benefits.
In connection with this, there is a recording medium containing an activation limited program (refer to, for example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2000-66890). The activation limited program basically allows a user who holds a given user code to only once install the program from the medium into a single computer. If the computer has history of installation of the program, the computer will be allowed to install the program a limited number of times.
The technical idea of the activation limited program disclosed in the Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2000-66890 may be used to beforehand record a slide-show executing program (slide-show-editing application software) in a recordable-playable optical disk. From the optical disk, the slide-show executing program may be only once installed in a personal computer to edit images for a slide show from photographs taken with a digital camera. The disclosure, however, suggests nothing about recording slide-show images edited with a personal computer in a recordable-playable optical disk according to an optical-disk-standard format such as a DVD-Video-standard format or a Video-CD-standard format.
When using a personal computer to record images for a slide show in a recordable-playable optical disk according to the DVD-standard format or CD-standard format, the user must first edit images in the personal computer. To edit images, format conversion into, for example, MPEG must be carried out. To edit music, format conversion into, for example, LPCM must be carried out. To carry out the conversion, the user must have special knowledge. General users scarcely have such special knowledge.